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All this white has Fitchburg-area towns in the red

By Jack Minch, jminch@sentinelandenterprise.com

Updated:
02/22/2013 04:56:04 PM EST

SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / JOHN LOVE
A plow clears Merriam Avenue in Leominster during the Blizzard of 2013 on Feb. 9. With another storm predicted for this weekend, local communities are trying to find the money to remove the snow.

You might have heard another snowstorm is forecast for this weekend.

It's the third weekend in a row with a snow event.

This time, the region is expected to get up to a foot, and it could be anything from heavy "cement" to fluffy flakes, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Simpson.

The closer to Interstate 495, the wetter and heavier the snow, he said.

Municipalities around North Central Massachusetts will have to move the snow out of the way of motorists and pedestrians, whether they have money in their budgets or not.

"We're in the red now by $7,564," Shirley Public Works Department administrative assistant Pam Callahan said. "This weekend is going to kill us."

"All in all, the expectations are very different than they were in the past," Mazzarella said. "The industry is changing immensely in terms of fulfilling expectations, and that affects the cost of getting the streets clean."

The storm hadn't formed as of Thursday, but is expected to build out of a system moving east from California, Simpson said. The second element of the storm is the jet stream that was over Alaska on Wednesday, he said.

"Two different energy sources will be combining off the mid-Atlantic coast and coming up this way," he said.

Simpson expects anywhere from six 6 to a foot in North Central Massachusetts, with the Mount Wachusett area on the higher end of the scale.

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It only takes 1 or 2 degrees to keep accumulations down because the water content will pack it down.

The high temperature Saturday is expected to be 35 to 37 degrees, then to fall to upper 20s overnight. The thermometer should rebound to the mid-30s on Sunday.

Unitil and National Grid are getting ready for the storm, officials said.

The utilities will station crews in areas where they expect problems.

"Heavier, wetter snow will bring down branches eventually on power lines easier than puffy snow will," National Grid spokeswoman Charlotte McCormack said. "Any snow -- especially if you are talking about 6, 8, 10 inches -- is going to make the work more challenging for our crews."

Unitil reached out to contractors to put them on standby Thursday, spokesman Alec O'Meara said.

The good news is that the forecast does not include high winds, he said.

The blizzard of Feb. 8-9 was a light, fluffy snow, but this weekend's is expected be wetter and heavier, Lunenburg DPW Director Jack Rodriquenz said.

"Frankly, I think I would rather have a foot and a half or 2 feet of fluff than this concrete," Rodriquenz said. "It's a whole different animal."

The timing of this winter's storms is not helping the budgets, Townsend Town Administrator Andrew Sheehan said.

The blizzard started on a Friday evening, after the normal workweek had ended.

"After the close of business Friday, it was all overtime and double-time," Sheehan said of paying workers.

Mazzarella said sanders had to be sent out before dawn Wednesday because melted snow had frozen. It wasn't a major weather event, he said, but there was danger of motorists getting in accidents.

Officials in larger communities in North Central Massachusetts said Thursday they still have some money left in their snow-removal accounts, but the smaller communities are working with deficits.

Ashby is already about $2,525 in the red, including labor and supplies, but Town-send is about $90,000 beyond its budget for snow removal.

Ashburnham Public Works Superintendent Stephen Nims isn't worried about being over budget. Last winter was the only time in his 26 years in the department that the snow and ice budget didn't go into deficit spending.

"As of today, we're $5,000 in the hole, so we've spent $185,000," Nims said Thursday.

Even when it doesn't snow, public-works departments have to go out and sand and salt the roads when snow melts and refreezes, he said.

Underfunding snow-removal budgets is the smart thing to do, officials in several towns said. It's the only budget item in which deficit spending is legal, according to state law.

The deficit can be paid using savings from elsewhere in the budget or free cash at the end of the year, or by putting the bill on top of the next budget without affecting the Proposition 2 1/2 limit, Sheehan said.

Raising the budget for snow removal is a one-way decision.

"Once you set your appropriation, you are not allowed in future years to reduce that," Sheehan said. "It forces communities to really underfund it."

Lancaster Town Administrator Orlando Pacheco agreed that whether the money is budgeted or not, it has to be spent, so it doesn't make sense to lock in the town on a higher figure for future years.

"Where we've had some light winters, you don't want to overbudget because the process of reducing it becomes harder," he said.

Lunenburg's Rodriquenz said his office is still adding up the bills for the blizzard two weekends ago -- and they're coming nearly as fast as the snowflakes.

Lunenburg uses about 17 subcontractors, and they worked about 30 hours for the storm, he said.

"Unlike last winter, this has been a good, old-fashioned winter," Rodriquenz said. "We are getting a storm a week."

He has only been under budget for snow removal once in his 18 years on the job, he said.

"The trick is to get it as close as you can and go over slightly," Rodriquenz said. "I don't know about you, but we find we have very little control over the winter."

Fitchburg has about $131,000 left of its $800,000 snow-removal budget, DPW Commissioner Lenny Laakso said, adding that it should be enough to get the city through this weekend's storm.

"There will be about 20 Department of Public Works plows and about 50 private plows," Laakso said. "If this storm pans out, it will put a good dent in our remaining funds."

The city has an additional $100,000 in free cash that Mayor Lisa Wong could tap into for clearing the city.

Gardner is also still in the black but getting close to the end of its budget.

The Highway Department started with a $275,000 budget and has about $35,000 left, but has asked the City Council for $100,000 more.

The spending situation could have been much worse, Ashby DPW Director Bill Davis said.

There were salt and sand stockpiles left from last winter, so he only had to buy 1,946 tons of sand and 440 tons of salt, he said.

He also started with $75,000 budget for winter operational expenses, which was his largest ever, but even with those advantages, he has spent $80,998, which is 108 percent over budget.

Davis said his winter overtime budget is $18,000, and he has spent $14,526 of that, or just over 80 percent.

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